Children play in a nearby park and couples walk their dog on this small street in Decatur. But walk into Anne-Marie Anderson’s backyard and enter a pseudo-farm in the middle of this city. A sign on the fence reads, “Beware of Chickens.” To the left, a layer of hay covers the floor of small hen house with a little doggie-door. Two eggs lay in a basket in the corner. But Anderson’s 18 chickens aren’t cooped up in their house. They are roaming around the sizable field, digging into the fallen leaves. All the chickens scream and flap their colorful wings to get across a stream. Glenda, one of the bigger chickens, has to waddle across the water. “Here, here chick, chicks,” Anderson clucks in her British accent as she gives out chicken scratch. “It’s very nice to hang out with a cup of coffee and watch the chickens running around clucking,” Anderson says. “They exude general contentment.” Anderson and her family are just some of the growing number of city dwellers that have decided to keep chickens in their backyards. The exact number of city chickens is unclear, but more than two thousand “backyard poultry buffs” have joined the Atlanta Backyard Poultry Meetup group that plans monthly meet-up events for conversations with “eggsperts.” Membership to the “Backyard Chickens” site has now grown to just under 200,000. Whether it is for their child’s enjoyment or for their family’s health, these urbanities have decided to color Atlanta’s city landscape with the wild feathers of their backyard pets, causing many city officials to rework their ordinances. “It’s coming up at pretty much every town and city across America,” says Patricia Foreman, author of the book “City Chicks,” “What is becoming evident and emerging to the forefront … is that people are realizing how charming they are and that they do add a lot to the urban landscape.” Foreman can quite easily discuss chickens for hours. From her view, this trend has been evolving for a while, within the broader shift and new embrace of local food. “Whoever controls your food supply controls you,” Foreman says. “That’s an ancient poultry proverb.” Anderson agreed that the control is a significant reason for owning chickens. “Personally, I am very concerned about very large corporations having total control of my food supply because they can do anything they want to it whether I agree to it or not,” Anderson says. With the controversies about GMOs and the nutritional value in consuming your own food, Foreman says people are turning to new ways to control their own food. “A lot of people are turning to their backyards and saying, ‘You know, we aren’t lacking land to grow food in,” Foreman says. “We are lacking a different paradigm. We need a new vision of how to produce our food.” People have now discovered the chicken’s role as a backyard employee, Foreman says. They are bio-mass recyclers, insecticide-ers, food suppliers, fertilizer producers and, Foreman adds, blood pressure reducers. ”First you get chickens. Then, you fall in love. And then, you learn how to employ them,” Foreman says. “They truly are pets with benefits.” The benefits for owners transcend the realm of health for chicken owner and founder of Zeiglar Homestead Services — a company that helps transforms backyards into “productive and sustainable homesteads” — Joey Zeigler. “[It’s interesting] how much your family can enjoy it and how it can inherently bring people together,” Zeigler says. “Food security and building food heritage really creates defacto communities.” On top of that, Zeiglar says one of his favorite aspects about helping homeowners fill their gardens with chickens is the expression they have when they first taste their own eggs. He says the eggs from home-grown chickens “are far superior to what you can buy anywhere.” He calls it “real food.” “It’s just more vibrant and I would say dense with flavor and very genuine,” he says. “You can taste that immediacy in it. The intimacy. You can taste your own blood and sweat in there a little bit. And it tastes better.“ Ask any passersby and they know of Zeigler and his elaborate garden of crops and coops. Zeigler says having six chickens makes him spend more time outside which in turn builds a tight-knit neighborhood. A lot of the community building, Zeigler says, stems from the pet aspect of owning chickens: “Chicken T.V.” as he calls it. No matter the futility of Chicken T.V., the trend is very indicative of Atlanta’s character. Walter Reeves, or the “Georgia Gardener” — one of the most respected garden gurus — believes this rural retreat is in Atlanta’s blood and is more of a “psychological phenomenon.” “In the South, we are not that far removed from a rural agrarian side,” Reeves says. “A lot of people in Atlanta remember the comfort of being on the farm.” Anderson says she finds a similar nostalgia amongst her clients at her chicken-keeping classes at the environmental awareness organization called the Wylde Center. They remember their grandparents’ chickens and want to go back to those roots. She says these pets have become a hip, fun and low-cost hobby that also act as garden helpers. That nice combination is a “win-win” situation in cities. As pets, they don’t require a whole lot of up-keep, Anderson. As long as you clean out the coop and give the chickens their feed, they are always happy, she says. In some ways, it may be easier than to keep than other pets, like dogs. “I think that’s the really nice thing,” Anderson says. “They fit very well in cities.” Needless to say, some don’t agree. Ordinances across Atlanta limit the number of chickens one can own and some counties have an outright ban on chicken keeping. Bradford Townsend, the planning and zoning director for the city of Roswell, says that one chicken-keeper in his city about four years ago changed the way that his city’s government treated the trend. At one point, the chicken-keeper claimed to have over 100 chickens in his small, single-family lot. “[It was] to the point where it got out of hand and the neighborhood started complaining,” Townsend says. They complained about the rooster noises, the un-kept coops and the smell. Even more, the man had two streams in his backyard that led to the city water supply. “You can imagine, when there was heavy rain, what went into our local aquifer,” Townsend says. This led Townsend to research new ways to control poultry. “There is a nuisance that is created,” Townsend says. “There are ways the city can deal with it through its code. The neighbors have some response when people take their hobby out of control.” After Roswell implemented its new ordinances — that restrict poultry by acre — there have been less neighborhood conflicts, Townsend says. “People realize … two or three chickens are good to have, I can’t have 40,” Townsend says. “40 of them is out of control. I think there has been a realization [that] you have got to maintain the proper numbers.” The problem that enforcement needs to crack down on, Townsend says, lies with the owners who start out with only a couple chicks but soon have anywhere from 50 to 100. “People who are getting little chicks for their kids to raise really have no clue what they are getting into,” Townsend says. Very few, he says, abuse the situation to this degree, but a few need to get pulled into line. As a strong believer in individual rights, Anderson says that is unreasonable. “I personally find it hysterically funny that someone would legislate against having two six-pound birds in the backyard when you are allowed to have as many children you want, a 200-pound dog and a firearm,” Anderson says. Anderson also thinks it is outrageous that the city is trying to prevent people from living sustainably. She is part of the greater movement to glorify the backyard chicken movement, with events like the “Urban Coop Tour” and “Chicks in the City.” As she wrote in the “Urban Coop Tour” brochure, “It’s not just about the chickens, though they are really cute. It’s also about sustainability, taking control of your family’s food supply and connecting with your inner farmer.” She says she tries not to be the “mad chicken lady,” but it is quite obvious: she loves her chickens, and she is in good company. “Chickens are simple, very straightforward,” Anderson says. “Why wouldn’t someone own them?” Sources: Anne-Marie Anderson Chicken Owner, Wylde Center teacher annemariea@bellsouth.net tel: (404) 687-0985 cell: (404) 667-1219 Bradford Townsend the planning and zoning director for the city of Roswell (770) 594-6176 Patricia Foreman Author or City Chickspat@chickensandyou.com (540) 460-6459 Office phone and fax: (540) 261-8775 Walter Reeves “The Georgia Gardener” georgiagardener@yahoo.com 404-358-6992 Joey W. Zeigler Chicken owner and founder of Zeigler Homestead Servicesinfo@zeiglerhomesteadservices.com (404) 772-2530 Karina Neumayer Young chicken-ownerkarina.neumayer@gmail.com (678) 538-8837 Laurin Sephos Intern at the Wylde Centerlsephos@emory.edu (209) 923-0275 Marni Pittman Chicken-ownersjoeandmarni@yahoo.com 678-357-0331 Ralph Ellis AJC reporter on backyard chicken movementralph.ellis@patch.com “Watching them taste food that was grown right here seeing how much better the food is